


Seconds.

by orphan_account



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: !!!, Angst, Canon Queer Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Illustrations, M/M, One Shot, now with
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 08:24:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3685137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why Simon takes a bullet for Kieren, and what it might cost him.<br/>Simon's perspective Episode 6, Season 2.  Inspired by Simon falling in love 'too quickly.'</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <b>Now with illustrations, 22/10/15</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	Seconds.

 

Head in the grass you lie frozen. Kieren will kill his father or die, or kill his father and die, or just.

You can realise you love someone in days

a few weeks, a year, because you have already been waiting your whole life.

You: a queer boy in his dad’s clothes. In a rainbow duvet. Ripping your mother apart as she tries to hold you close. Awake and conscious. Experiments exposing your spine. Drug addled and chasing an escape from your hole of a future: every day the same.

You: meeting Amy. Rising from the grave, earth stuck to lips and face. Finding something to believe in. Believing for once. You are homeless. You ring the number without options. You meet him, standing on his grave. You believe in fear (love. Desperation.)

You love him before he knows anything about you, and what you did, or _will_ do to him.

You pull up your sleeves and show him your marks as if they connect to his own arteries.  
He sees you as a charismatic cult leader; you see him as an interesting fake.

But something bites.

You realise you love someone when the potential of their leaving rips you apart. You have lost everything before. You have started from nothing before, but you cannot, _you will not_ , start again.

The undead prophet sings in your head.

As you touch others of your kind, on their shoulders, their arms, encouraging their stories is a gift that makes you smile. Your task, the date of their rising, a side note. You have a quest, but you are falling in love with life.

In white skin and white eyes you feel.

You meet him after the overdose. After you fail your mother. After your mother, her love so enduring, fails to stop you.  
You are standing on his grave and he walks towards you, moussed up, faking human, beautiful, stupid. When you first saw him you were curious but heartless, because your heart felt so big and you could lose so much. You were in love with a promise. This individual, whiny and conformist, should have been something you used.  
Talking slyly, eloquent, you let your anger show in aggression by simply asserting your right to exist. But you didn’t mean to make him lose his job. You were well acquainted with the fact of your death, dead heart, dead life, dead future, but not with how he stood up, for himself, and eventually for you.  
He pulled out his fake eyes, rubbed off his makeup, and held your face against his hand. You cannot take your eyes off him. He bursts through, knocking down the door of the bungalow. You ask. He kiss-interrupts you. He kisses you.  
The rush is now between your beliefs, his beliefs, and the truth. You try to be what he tells you he wants; in orange and awkward in a suit, you say all the wrong things; you even say nothing.  
But when he moves, he speaks up.  
You love him more than you ever thought possible; he is so beautiful.

So you leave. Even though you know, he has lost people before. Even as your arm shakes with what might be asked of you. When they tell you to kill him, you are not surprised but despairing. If he dies, there is no one waiting ever.

He is spitting out black blood.  
He is grey and hostile, like this godforsaken town.  
He is advancing towards them; he is trying to rip himself away.  
His father is an idiot who cannot make his mind up in time, loving in bumbling errors. Your kind are enthusiastic and obsessed, praying for a second rising without caring the cost, at least for you. Those living idiots hovering ready to aim, to shoot, to kill. It does not matter if Kieren can survive a bullet: this smalltown country mob will rip him apart, or ship him back, a non-compliant.

You left him here, then came back to kill him.

Because you wanted a better world: music, your guitar in the sunshine or in the bush and stars; holding your arms around friends, community; skin healed and unbroken, wounds invisible; traveling every part of the world; killing Him.  
And you wonder at this religion of sacrifice. And you wonder what possible payoff ending a life could perform: would you ever sleep again, would you even speak?

Kieren is fighting a chemical that no one else fights.

Kieren is fighting a chemical that was forced into his throat as he was dragged here in that damn monsters car, a chemical that would leave him like you, murdered parent, no home or family to come back to. Even if he survives this, there is only incarceration, treatment, death, and loneliness.

You shudder to look at him, so beautiful to fight this. Before Kieren, everything was running from loneliness. He, his face, your memories, to be with him, is a future that you cannot have. There is no going back.

You jump in front of him.

Kieren, the first risen.  
Kieren, rabid.  
Kieren, you must kill.  
Kieren, about to be shot.  
Kieren, held in this mock trial of a system and you will be too, as soon as you reveal yourself.  
Kieren, sent away.  
Kieren, treatment.  
Kieren, really unforgivably dead.  
No, not if you can stop it.

You love him.

You jump.

The knife falls.

**Author's Note:**

> Characters and plot property of 'In the Flesh' and its writers. Written (and performed) only with love :)
> 
> I wrote this because I loved how quickly and deeply Simon fell in love with Kieren, what it meant for him to give up everything meaningful in an attempt to save him.For such a strong character Simon becomes very vulnerable at the end of the series, and Kieren really steps up in making their relationship work, as well as knowing what he wants as person.I love their relationship; it resonates strongly with me growing up queer/outsider in a rural community or family. I get how you can just ‘fall’ for someone so completely, and that absolute desperation, thinking if, or when, you lose them, there will be no one else coming.


End file.
